Jerry Yang is no longer “Chief Yahoo.” He left Yahoo after 17 years.
That’s the news most people read or hear. Most people don’t know Jerry or his approach.
Let me share a personal story.
In 1995 I first met Jerry at Yahoo. This was before the company was
public and before anyone really cared much at all about “the Internet”.
First thing I noticed were the purple chairs in the lobby. They looked
like something from a kids TV show set. Fun and different.
Jerry met me in the lobby and took me on a brief tour. Brief because
Yahoo was maybe 50 people then. Maybe. Everyone worked on one floor in a
rectangle-shaped area with Jerry in the middle.
He had the worst desk in the building in terms of placement. No window
view. In a hall. He said he liked to be in the middle of the action and
it made sense to me. Yahoo wasn’t about show or flash.
He walked me around to meet employees and I was pleasantly surprised
when a tall, lanky, rail-thin kid (about 6′ 4″) stood up and said
“Steve!” I did a double take and it was Mike Foster, a guy that went to
my high school in Southern California. Mike was a band geek in high
school and the last guy I would expect to see at Yahoo. And yet he was a
fit, Yahoo geeky cool.
Across from Jerry’s desk was a cubicle with scattered magazines, soda
cans, and more that looked like a college dorm had been crammed into it.
“David’s not here right now but that’s his desk”, Jerry said and pointed
to the genius clutter of his co-founder, David Filo. “He usually comes
to work barefoot”.
I thought to myself “great, it’s not about suits and ties and phony
image”.
Jerry led me to a conference room and went to get “the guys”. A few
minutes later CEO Tim Koogle and CFO Gary Valenzuela walked in with
Jerry.
We all sat down and talked about this new-fangled medium called the
Internet and discussed business models, the ad industry, if advertisers
would show up in this new medium. I talked about the cable TV, broadcast
and other mediums, how their mix of ads and subscriptions could
eventually be the Internet model.
Those were the days when there was no video, no audio, no advertising on
the Web and when few people at all were online. Those that were online
did so via Prodigy, Compuserve, or the new kid AOL. Those were NOT the
Internet, they were closed online services that required their own
software to sign on and deliver content.
After about an hour Jerry asked me to get some lunch with him. We exited
to the parking lot and I expected to see him march towards a fancy
sports car. He walked over to a beat up old Dodge Ram truck with a cab
on it.
“That’s mine,” he said. As I got in he mentioned not to worry about the
dog hair on the seat, that his dog (a Husky as I recall) often rode with
him. The dog wasn’t there that day but the hair and dog smell were. The
more I saw Jerry the more I thought he had something special. No flash
or gimmicks.
As we left the parking lot we passed a Taco Bell.
“That’s the unofficial company cafeteria,” Jerry said. “But today we’ll
go to a deli that’s a bit better. Besides, Marc Andreessen (Netscape
founder) also may be there, maybe we can say hello”.
My first impression of Jerry was he was not in it “for the money”, that
Yahoo was “something special” in tech, a creative, fun place to work, a
company leading the way into the untapped world of the Web as a
business.
A few months later I put together a conference in Los Angeles and
invited 12 CEOS of Internet companies to come and talk. I asked 12
figuring that maybe half would not show. They all did.
11 CEOs of the top Internet companies were sat around a fold out picnic
table, sitting on unforgiving metal foldout chairs. It was like the UN
of the Web. Between all of them lived the new industry.
Where was Jerry?
We waited a few minutes to start the conference and Jerry walked in,
smiling like a kid who just got an ice cream cone. He pulled up a chair
as the other CEOs made room.
“Sorry I was late, my plane was late”. Jerry had flown coach from San
Jose to LA, despite having put the first of a few million in the bank.
I asked every CEO at the table what they were focused on. All gave good
answers for the audience. Jerry said the most memorable:
“As I flew down here I was thinking the whole time how Yahoo can make
the user experience better”. I thought Yahoo at the time was already
light years ahead vs. the boring “home pages” done by others. Again, I
thought, this guy is pushing the edge, not satisfied. Good.
He was the only one who mentioned this, of the 12.
My immediate thought was “this guy gets it. He’s tuned in. He’s also not
arrogant but humble.” I knew then that Yahoo would go on to be a huge
success.
It did. Brand, financial and otherwise. That focus gave Yahoo the edge
to beat Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Hotbot and many more search and
directory sites.
Yahoo crushed them on number of users, revenue, brand, growth, etc.
Why?
Jerry.
Since then the “user experience” has been the key ingredient of the Web.
Other companies picked up the mantle, even as Yahoo lost it.
Google.
eBay.
Amazon.
Friendster/MySpace/Facebook.
Twitter.
Alas…
Pundits can and will dissect what Yahoo has done wrong. Armchair
quarterbacking is easy. People who never knew the seed from the tree.
The one thing I know is Jerry Yang was the force at Yahoo before it got
haywire and Yahoo lost its role at the center of the Web experience.
It’s not about billions of dollars, etc.
It’s about a guy who had a dream and with a college buddy (David
Filo) did something that — for a time (even a long time in Internet
years) — was the world’s most-inspiring and original Internet company.
My hat’s off to Jerry and David. The Internet wouldn’t be the same
without their quirky vision.
-Steve
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